New People's Army guerrillas seized Roberto Luna, two soldiers and two police officers serving as his security detail, early Wednesday in Compostela Valley province.

In a statement Thursday, the rebels said Luna is being tried for the 2001 killing of a former Lingig mayor, the 2007 killing of two men from the same town and graft in a government waterways project.

The police says security forces have been deployed to rescue the mayor and his bodyguards.

The Communist rebels usually summarily execute people they find to have committed “crimes against the people.”